


O Shall We Fear the Terror in the Night?

by Inksinger



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Attempted Murder, Betrayal, Blood, Blood Kink, Blood and Gore, Blood and Torture, Blood and Violence, Bloodplay, Bows & Arrows, Branding, Cannibalism, Come Inflation, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Diokophobia, Drowning, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Erotic Horror, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, F/F, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Gods, Graphic Description, Hallucinations, Hallucinogens, Humiliation, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Impalement, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kinkterror 2019, Lwa | Loa | L'wha, M/M, Manipulation, Mind Manipulation, Multi, Murder, Murder Kink, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Pavlovian response, Physical Abuse, Prompt Fill, Psychological Trauma, Public Hand Jobs, Public Humiliation, Public Nudity, Public Sex, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, References to Addiction, Sacrifice, Sexual Content, Sexual Violence, Size Difference, Size Kink, Snuff, Spirits, Survival Training, Theft, Torture, Training from Hell, Troll Anatomy, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-11-15 04:01:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20859893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/pseuds/Inksinger
Summary: A series of prompt fills for ethicsbecomeaesthetics' Kinkterror 2019 challenge, which can be found here: https://ethicsbecomeaesthetics.tumblr.com/post/187539455979/kinkterror-a-month-of-erotic-horrorTags, characters, and relationships will be updated as I go. Buckle in kids, you all know what I'm about.Chapter nine: Dar'khan is... "encouraged"... to murder his countrymen in the final hours before the Scourge assault on the Sunwell.





	1. Blood and Gore

_They never had a chance._

_Their patrol was taken without warning, set upon on all sides by the Amani and the beasts they commanded._

_Their captain fell first, eyes bristling with twin arrows as he collapsed with a rattling mewl. His blood ran from his ruined sockets and painted his face a grisly scarlet as a subordinate raced to his side - young and stupid, more concerned with a dying man than with not dying in his own turn. There was nothing to be done; the arrows sat too deeply nestled in his skull, had pierced the brain too fully, and even if he could survive the captain would have been an empty husk forever after, robbed of thought and skill and self._

_One of the Amani took more pity than the subordinate. The subordinate used all his knowledge of field medicine and fought to damn his captain to a half-life, and did not hear his fellows’ dying screams - nor the headhunter who came behind him._

_A hand knotted in his hair, and long, talon-hard nails shredded the young ranger's scalp, and there was such agony that the boy was blinded and knew he must be scalped - no pain was this deep, no injury was this hideous, he was dying, he must be dying, he knew death was an agony and this was agony—_

_A hand forced herbs into his screaming maw and clapped his jaws shut; hot breath washed across his ruined scalp and tortured the meat that laid exposed there. He struggled and was held fast; he spat the herbs out and the hand at his mouth fed them back into him, wide fingers jamming past his teeth and down into his throat until he gagged and retched about them and was forced to swallow or drown in the blood and vomit bubbling in his gullet. He was dying, they were killing him, why else would the leaves they fed him make the pain recede, make him suddenly so boneless in their grasp…?_

_His captor picked him up and held him in the mockery of an embrace, his back against the troll’s chest, and he could feel the creature laughing as his eyes found again his captain lying supine on the ground. Another troll came, gore-spattered and bristling still with battle fury, and fell upon the captain with a wicked grin at the captive elf, straddling the elvish body and sitting upon it as though to prevent the dead from fleeing - reaching forward then and ripping open the slender throat, digging nails into flesh until it split and broke and tore away, hot meat and steaming blood cascading over green-furred hands as they worked to shred each vein and tendon with a careful pace that bordered grisly sensuality._

_The captain's spine gleamed white and red; his ruined head rolled obscenely on it as his gear was cut away and his well-muscled body was made bare upon the bloody soil. The troll ran bloody hands across his chest and cooed in a language the captive elf knew only pieces of, then lunged forward and took the fair head off with a gruesome crack of breaking bones and shredding sinews, and the rest of the body jerked and twisted violently as the troll began his work in earnest, ripping and crushing and breaking and chattering all the while in his guttural mother-tongue, and the young ranger could not scream and could not close his eyes as the body of his captain was reduced to meat and broken bones upon the forest floor…_

It isn't quite dawn when Halduron awakens; the sky beyond his window is still dark, with only a few faint streaks of violet along the clouds to signal the coming of the sun.

His blankets lay tangled about his legs, fur and silk twisted into knots about each other from another restless night. Only half of the pillows are still scattered around him; the rest seem to have been knocked to the floor.

He notices these things and does not care, not now, not yet. He knows where he is: This is his bedroom in the quarters afforded to him within the Spire. His guards will be outside, ready to come should he call or pull the scarlet cord at his bedside.

Lor'themar is just down the hall.

Halduron banishes this last thought and rolls onto his back as his racing heartbeat slowly evens out once more. He is safe, and many miles and many years stand between him and the trolls who decimated his first unit. He is not a child anymore, raw and terrified and addled by trollish drugs and all the hideous things he had been made to witness and endure. He does not need to run to Lor'themar and sit trembling in the shelter of the older man's arms.

And he simply _cannot_ run to Lor'themar besides - not this morning, not as he is now. The man knows that his nightmares persist even still, and would welcome him readily into his bed if Halduron sought him out - but Halduron sincerely doubts that his oldest friend would be so forgiving to know that they still cause him to awaken… like this.

Dawn is still several hours away, and the residents of the Spire will sleep for a while longer yet. Certainly, if his guards have not come running yet, Halduron can be assured that they will not come running five minutes from now.

He doubts he will need even that long.

Halduron drags a hand through his hair and chews down on his lip until it splits. The taste of blood against his tongue will help him forget, for just a moment, that he is not a child any longer.


	2. Torture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm late because I tried to give it plot and then I rushed so it's garbage and I absolutely failed to make this snuffy enough I'm so sorry

Blood glimmered where it lay cooling on the broken stonework, lit by the grim torchlight and campfires the rangers had built while they waited for the dragon fire to die down enough that they might move on. Their makeshift camp was far enough from the blaze to be safe, at least, and with the main pocket of resistance having been decimated and scouts sent out to maintain a guarded perimeter, the Farstriders and their reinforcements were free to take a watchful rest.

Watchful - but not as quiet as they might have been. Not this time. Not while Zul’jin himself sat in bondage at the heart of their encampment, alone and weak from battle and wholly at the mercy of those to whose loved ones he and his followers had shown none.

The first several strikes had been the monster's own doing, dealt in response to his endlessly sadistic taunts and jeers as the elves had set up camp. But soon he had fallen silent, due in part perhaps to the pain of his cracked jaw, and rather than mollify the elves his sudden quiet had instead agitated many of them further.

Parren was the first to lash out without cause, rising suddenly to cross the camp in a handful of long strides and deal the troll a hard blow across the back of his head.

“Parren,” Halduron said, though he found it hard to summon any real heat to his tone.

“I tire of this creature,” Parren spat, snarling down at Zul'jin as the captive troll shook his head as though to clear it. “Even in silence he is obscene.”

Zul'jin snorted, and earned himself a kick to the ribs that sent him doubling over with a grunt.

“Parren is right,” Merinna said. “If we must endure this wretch, why shouldn't _he_ be made to endure _us?”_

There was a breath of silence - and then Zul'jin began to laugh, low and hoarse and audibly pained.

“Ya be no better dan you call us,” he sneered, raising mad eyes to scowl at each elf in their turn. “Callin’ us butchers and savages, den sittin’ caught by dragon fire and tinkin’ de best way to pass de time is torturin’ somebody you got chained and broken already.”

Merinna hissed a string of invective, and Parren visibly seemed to struggle with the urge to draw his sword as two, then three of the other rangers raised their heads and cast murderous looks in their captive’s direction. Zul'jin met their looks with open defiance - but he was bound and injured, and far away from any who might try to rescue him.

_“Nobody gonna come,”_ a voice whispered, clear as the night Halduron had first heard it. _“You gonna scream and cry and nobody gonna come lookin’. Better if you go quiet and scream when I tell you to.”_

Zul'jin met Halduron’s gaze - and flinched from what he saw there. The slightest twitch in those strong shoulders, an instant of uncertainty in those beady eyes, but they screamed fear to Halduron.

Halduron fought down the heady swell of bloodlust that threatened to consume him. He could take no part in the torture of their prisoner- the priestess Liadrin was nearby, and would come to investigate once the troll began to scream. She was no ranger; she would not understand such savagery, not even when it was unleashed against a troll she had every reason to hate.

Someone would need to pretend to be unsettled by the carnage.

His rangers looked to him for direction. They were all under his direct command, even the handful who had fallen in after their original company was scattered in the battle before. No matter how furious they may be, or how bloodthirsty, he could be certain that they would fall in line if he commanded them to stay their weapons.

“Don't kill him,” Halduron said.

Zul'jin’s brow twitched, as though the troll were confused by the simple order - and then Parren whirled about and struck him again, this time swinging his arm around to carve deep, bloody lines into the troll’s face with his nails.

Merinna and three others rose from the fireside to join Parren as blood splattered across the ground; others from all across the encampment turned to watch, with several more stalking over to take a piece out of Zul'jin for themselves once the realization set in that their captain was aware of what was happening and making no move to stop it. Soon the nearest onlookers began jeering at the troll and offering suggestions to those who beat him.

Merinna kicked Zul'jin squarely between his legs, then grabbed his head and forced it down to connect with her knee when he doubled over. As he recoiled from the double blow, Merinna reached down and grabbed his tusks in her hands, then stepped back and down, forcing Zul'jin down with her until he lay stretched over his own legs; the chain binding his wrists to the broken wall he sat against wasn't long enough to let him pull his arms around, and so they remained stretched tight behind him.

“Bring another torch,” Merinna called, keeping her weight levered down on Zul'jin's tusks.

Zul'jin spat something in Zandali, and the muscles in his back and shoulders rolled as he began fighting to raise his head again. Merinna was as strong as any of her fellows, but Zul'jin was a fearsome warrior even bound and bloodied, and soon it became evident that Merinna was struggling to maintain her grip - until Parren came around to plant a foot firmly on the back of Zul'jin's neck, and the troll fell still with a choked snarl.

“Sit still, mongrel,” Parren said. “Wouldn't want one of us to miss and hit something vital, would you?"

“Your captain gave you orders,” Zul'jin sneered. “You gonna risk disobeyin’ him?”

“Ah, but you forget,” Halduron called, “that I can see everything. If you twist at the wrong time and wind up being run through, that will be your fault - not theirs.”

Again Zul'jin cast a hard, searching scowl at him. While the troll was distracted, another torch was brought, and one of the rangers heated a long knife over its flame.

“What game are you playing, little elf?” Zul'jin demanded.

“That's _Captain_ to you, wretch,” said the ranger with the knife.

The man knelt down and ran an appreciative hand over Zul'jin's back, drawing a shudder from the troll. Then he drew the heated blade slowly along the troll's skin, drawing a long, curving line into his flesh until Zul'jin snarled and tossed himself about again.

Parren’s foot came off the troll's neck and swung around to connect with his ribs with a loud _crack,_ and Zul'jin choked on a cry just before Merinna moved back to let Parren kick him in the head.

As if some signal had been given, others descended upon the troll, kicking at him and stomping hard on his legs as he tried first to lash out in return, then to curl up and protect his head and stomach as best he could. The effort was in vain; two of the elves reached down and dragged him upright by the arms, each grabbing a tusk to keep him from attempting to gore his attackers as they pinned him back against the broken wall, baring his stomach to the blades and nails of their fellows.

Even battered and clearly suffering a concussion, Zul'jin was no easy prey, and Halduron almost felt a trace of respect for the brute as he watched Zul'jin wrestle his legs free and again attempt to kick at the rangers nearest to him. But two more rangers managed to grab his legs and wrestle them apart, then sat down on them to keep them immobilized as their knife-wielding fellow again approached Zul'jin.

“Let's try that again, shall we?” the ranger asked, kneeling down between the troll's legs with a smile. “Sit still this time; I might knick an artery otherwise.”

“You gonna pay fa dis,” Zul'jin spat. _“All_ of you. We gonna soak de ground with your blood and feed ya to de cats.”

The ranger pressed the flat of his knife against Zul'jin's chest, and the troll's howl was almost loud enough to drown out the sound of his flesh burning under the blade. Halduron wondered idly if honest flame or magic were responsible for keeping the knife so hot throughout the troll's beating.

The ranger didn't stop there. Once Zul'jin fell silent, he began cutting again, and this time his strokes were even slower, as though he were caressing rather than shredding Zul'jin's flesh. Each pass brought another ragged snarl, and drew blood enough that the troll's stomach had been painted red with it by the time the ranger set his blade aside and placed his open hands against Zul'jin's ruined chest.

“That wasn't so bad, was it?” the ranger cooed.

Then he hooked his fingers into the gouges beneath his hands and dragged sharply downward, and Zul'jin let out a shriek as his chest was flayed.

Halduron watched on in silence, listening with only half an ear for Liadrin to arrive. He could not join in. He could not allow himself to become too invested in the carnage before him, lest she see the darkness in his eyes and know for certain that he condoned this torture.

Someone had to pretend to be disgusted at this carnage.


	3. Cannibalism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had this one half-written as part of an outtake from the prompt for October 1st. Chapter lengths are fake anyway.

The trees blurred around them, and the young elf lost all track of time and urgency as he watched a troll carve into the body of his captain. Whatever drugs had been fed to him were still working through his body, numbing his limbs and soothing his racing heart even as his mind screamed at him to fight, to scream, to run away. What point was there? They would find him, and then they would kill him and mutilate his corpse and cut him open…

The troll set his knife aside at last, then hooked his fingers hard about the collarbones and dragged until meat and sinew and bone separated, like game fowl pulled apart for cooking, like a stag torn open to be cleaned and gutted. The ribs followed, cracked apart and broken loose and cast aside - carefully, methodically, in even pieces - and the organs now laid bare were set upon, some wrent with gleeful abandon, others set aside in a doubled hide pack.

All but the heart. The heart they took, and the heart they brought to the captive ranger who lay limp against the headhunter's chest, and pressed the still-hot flesh of it against his lips until he let them part of his own volition - they were feeding him, and it was only meat, and somewhere in his mind there was a voice shrieking but he could not understand the words and the blood already ran down his chin and back into his throat and the dead did not really need their heartbeats anyway…

“Good boy,” someone told him as he swallowed, and their accent was wrong and he wondered why they must speak Common when Thalassian was so much sweeter on the tongue, but there was a smile in their voice and he could not linger long on any train of thought, not addled as he was.

“Again,” another said, and again the meat was pressed against his mouth, and again his lips and teeth parted to take in another bloody scrap. “You gotta long day ta come, little elf.”

A long day to come?

A hand passed across his head, large and warm and not entirely ungentle, and his thoughts scattered away in the wave of pleasure that followed in its passing. This time his mouth was open when the meat was offered to him, and his mewl was silenced only when a gentle finger brushed along his jaw, urging him to bite down again.

Was this what they wanted? That he should eat and let them be gentle to him? That didn't seem so bad at all… 

The one behind him rumbled, and Halduron curled closer to the sensation as a hand passed over his hair again.

“You gonna make a good little pet,” someone said.

Halduron only smiled and took another willing bite of what was offered to him.


	4. Snuff - Mutilation - Captive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I tried really hard not to copy the feast from The Road to El Dorado. I failed.
> 
> Because I'm a feral little murderbunny and also lazy as all shit, this chapter encompasses the prompts for days four, five, and six.
> 
> I have been awake for twenty hours.

“I gonna keep dis one.”

Halduron groaned and shifted as consciousness slowly returned to him. He couldn't move much: He was sitting upright against something warm and not terribly soft, and his arms and legs were bound against…

“Ya’wake, little one?” someone asked, and whatever he was laying against rumbled in time with their words. Was he…?

Halduron tried to roll onto his side, but could only manage to wriggle a little in one direction. His legs remained bent slightly before him; his arms only moved with his restraints, and those moved to enclose his waist and chest.

Frowning, Halduron looked down and saw he was tied limb-to-limb to a massive troll… and had been stripped completely naked.

He cried out and jerked against his captor, but bound as he was he could only thrash uselessly while the troll laughed and dragged his hands along Halduron's chest and belly.

“Sit still, little one,” the troll said, too close to his ear. “Ya gonna be stuck wit’ ol’ Ro’kun for a while, ya might as well settle in.”

“You keep dat one in line,” another voice growled, and Halduron twisted about in time to watch a second troll prowl behind them. This one's eyes locked on Halduron, and something worse than murder flickered there as he added, “He cause too much trouble, and we gonna scream him like we gonna scream the rest.”

The troll Halduron was tied to - Ro’kun, this one called himself Ro'kun - scoffed and rattled something off in their tongue. Whatever was said was enough to shoo the second troll off, though not before he gave Halduron another long, uncomfortable leer.

“Ya gonna behave all right,” Ro'kun said, switching back to Common as he shifted both of them about. “Ro'kun gonna make sure ya break slow and soft, so ya don't run away.”

"You won't break me at all, beast," Halduron spat, struggling more furiously than ever as the troll's hands began to travel lower along his abdomen. "You might as well kill me - I won't give you anything. Not a scrap of information, you hear me?"

But the troll only laughed again, and Halduron choked on a gasp as he felt the creature's tusks brush against the unguarded skin of his neck and shoulder.

"Ya got it wrong, little mon," Ro'kun told him. Hot breath washed across the side of Halduron's neck and face. "Ya not gonna be tortured. We know ya don't got any information we want. Ya too small; dey wouldn't tell a pup anyt'ing important."

A sharp cry split the air before Halduron could answer that - an _elvish_ cry, fair-voiced and clear even though it rang with suffering - and the young ranger left Ro'kun alone for the moment in favor of twisting back around to see where the other elf was, and what was being done to them.

He regretted the decision almost immediately.

Ro'kun had the pair of them seated to the side of what could only be an altar: A massive, raised stone slab carved with trollish iconography and stained a deep, unsettling black-brown across the top and sides. Behind the altar stood a masked troll wearing the garb and gear of a witch doctor, and behind her stood a long, low cage of wood and carven stone. Squinting against the light of the massive fire behind the cage, Halduron could make out the shapes of several elves through the bars - all of them stripped nude, and all of them familiar as members of his company.

Thirty trolls or more sat in a semicircle about the front and sides, drinking crude liquor, smoking strange herbs, eating meat that something in Halduron's subconscious warned him against examining too closely. Lanterns were strung up, and raised on posts that must be ten feet high or better there were an array of crude, terrifying images - batlike monstrosities with too many eyes and winged serpents with fangs that dripped with scarlet fluid and something that looked almost like a lynx, if lynxes were made of sheets of shale and had bursts of crystals for eyes and rivers of oil for tongues.

This was a ritual gathering. Halduron had never seen one or its trappings, but he had heard his captain describe them and knew with utter, hideous certainty that this was one of them.

“Light help us,” Halduron breathed, and if he trembled against Ro'kun he didn't feel it for himself, only scarcely registered the troll's answering chuckle as he watched two of the Amani drag one of the men from the cage.

“Nah, little mon,” Ro'kun told him. “Only de loa be listenin’ now. Ya gonna pray, ya pray ta dem, and maybe dey listen ta ya. No Light gonna be helpin’ ya tonight.”

Halduron didn't answer - his eyes were glued to the other ranger as the trolls led him to the altar. Something was wrong with the man; any ranger could take far rougher handling than that and keep his bearings, but this one seemed kittenish and clumsy as he squirmed between his captors, and when they shoved him down on his back atop the altar his blond head struck the stone with a sickening crack.

The blow stilled the feeble struggle the man had put up before, leaving the trolls who had him free to work at tying him down, binding his arms behind his back and folding his legs until they could tie his ankles firmly against the undersides of his thighs.

“Dey got him nice and quiet, now,” Ro'kun murmured. One massive hand shifted down to cup the inside of Halduron's thigh as he spoke. “Dat one not gonna run from what's comin’, even if dey cut him loose and let him try.”

Drugs, Halduron thought as he watched the warriors step away from the altar. The man was drugged, and if he was drugged, all of the others in the cage must be, too.

And if _they_ were all drugged…

“What did you feed us?” Halduron demanded, jerking about again as Ro'kun’s other hand came up to grip him under the shoulder.

“Dem in de cage, dey got sleep smoke,” Ro'kun answered. He lifted Halduron up off his lap and released his leg for a moment, and Halduron winced as his arm was forced behind his back, bound still to the troll as he was.

The witch doctor approached the altar and drew a long, wicked blade from her hip. The ranger bound before her still seemed dazed, and gave no sign at all that he realized what was happening as the troll raised her weapon above her head, laid her free hand on his belly, and began to chant in a low, droning rasp.

_“You_, though,” Ro'kun continued, moving their arms back around in front of Halduron. “Nah, we gave ya somet’ing else. Ol’ Ro'kun be wantin’ ya a little more lively. Ya got t’istle and saran swirlin’ in ya lungs, not dat snowdrop milk we gave de others.”

He had both hands wrapped about Halduron's waist now, holding the elf aloft without so much as a tremble in his arms and keeping their legs spread and bent at the knees in what might otherwise have been a very comfortable position. But there was no comfort to be had here, not with the creature literally breathing down his back, and certainly not while the witch doctor continued her monotonous chanting over the still-unresponsive ranger bound beneath her.

“You gonna watch, little mon?” Ro'kun asked. “Dat boy be a good fighter. He deserves a witness.”

“What is she doing?” Halduron asked, hoping against all reason that the knife was only ceremonial, ornamental, not at all intended to carve anything but theoretical spirits or omens or curses—

Ro'kun pulled him slowly down until something hard and hot and blunt pressed against Halduron's backside.

Halduron spat and tried again to wrestle away, but again found himself unable to resist the troll's superior strength as Ro'kun laughed and slid his length up along the crack of the elf's rear.

“She gonna open him up,” Ro'kun said, bringing a hand up to rest against Halduron's chest and pressing the elf back against him. “Carve him open from diaphragm ta pelvis—” and here the troll lowered his hand again, trailing his thumb slowly down along the line of Halduron's own stomach, “—and spill all dat pretty bright red blood for de loa.”

“No,” Halduron spat, trembling again as the chanting began to rise in volume and inflection. All around, the trolls who had gathered to watch began to pound the ground or the surrounding stonework to the rhythm of the witch doctor's words, slowly at first, then accelerating as her chanting reached a fevered note.

Ro'kun chuckled, and the sound was dark and menacing.

“Gonna do it ta all o’ ya little friends,” he murmured, thumbing the dip of Halduron's navel. “Dey be good, strong warriors. De loa gonna make good use o’ dem - better dan ya own people ever did.”

The ranger on the altar groaned weakly and at last began to shift, turning his head towards the witch doctor just as her chanting broke off into a sudden yowl - and then silence fell across the camp.

No hands fell now against stone or hard-packed soil.

No one breathed a word.

No single muscle seemed to twitch.

The hair along the back of Halduron's neck stood on end, but even he felt frozen - desperately wishing he could make the silence stop, and just as desperately terrified of shattering the eerie stillness uninvited. If the other prisoners felt the silence, too, or were at all affected by it, he did not know - his eyes were glued unblinking to the ranger tied upon the slab.

The prisoner shivered once… then, with another groan, began to raise his head, mouth open as though to call for help—

The witch doctor howled and plunged her dagger downward, and all the world dissolved into a cacophony of sound and movement as she pinned the screaming ranger’s head against the slab and tore him open from his ribs to his groin in a single, vicious sweep.

_** “NO—!”**_ Halduron's scream broke off into a higher, ragged shriek as he was lifted again and _impaled_ on Ro'kun’s cock, stretched too far and too fast and torn open for it in spite of whatever lubrication the troll had applied while Halduron was distracted.

“Hush,” Ro'kun purred, but his voice was distant and lost in the roar of the other trolls and the wailing cries of the witch doctor and the thunder of blood in Halduron's ears as he was made to take the entirety of his captor’s girth in that first sweeping thrust that stole his breath and drove pressure up against his guts - he must be dying, he was going to die, this was a killing blow, organs ruptured and flesh ripped open and blood spilled in the midst of a hungry, savage throng—

A thumb forced itself into his mouth, slick and foul-tasting as his jaw was grabbed and his tongue forced down beneath the intruding appendage and… 

Coolness washed through him, soothing like wind on heated flesh, like water on parched soil, and in its passing the pain became a dull discomfort and the twisting pressure in his belly subsided until he could breathe again around it.

“Dere,” Ro'kun rumbled, though he kept his thumb hooked firmly in Halduron's mouth for another moment. “A little more saran and t’istle ta soothe ya fragile bones. Ol’ Ro'kun not gonna snap ya in half just yet.”

Halduron trembled again as the last bit of chill faded from his veins, but said nothing as Ro'kun at last removed his hand and brought it to rest at the base of Halduron's throat. Instead he turned his attention back to the altar, and to the ruined carcass sprawled upon it. The victim's throat had been cut from ear to ear while Halduron had been distracted by his own suffering, and now the head lolled about at a grotesque angle as the witch doctor's helpers lifted the body and carried it to the bonfire.

“He gave everyt'ing we needed from him,” Ro'kun said, running his free hand along Halduron's belly. “We give de rest to de fire, let it burn and choke de forest wit’ de smell o’ death.”

“You're animals,” Halduron spat, tearing his eyes away at last so he did not have to watch the body of his former comrade be devoured and reduced to cinders. “Every one of you. We will—”

Ro'kun bucked beneath him, and Halduron gasped as the creature's length pistoned through him in response.

“None o’ dis ‘we’,” the troll growled. “Ya not be goin’ back ta ya shinin’ cities again. We gotcha now. Ya belong to de Amani.”

And with that the troll began to thrust, slowly for the moment, long, rolling strokes that made it seem as though Halduron were being hollowed out by what must surely be a foot or so of cock.

Ro'kun let out a long, guttural sound and dragged one hand down to rest over the bulge in Halduron's abdomen. Bound as he was to the troll's wrist, Halduron was forced to place his own hand against his belly, too - forced to feel himself swell and writhe with each upward thrust of Ro'kun's hips, just as he was forced to feel the troll's chest rumble with each moan and growl the beast let out.

But what brought pleasure to Ro'kun only brought fresh suffering to Halduron. There was no love in this, no passion, no desire - the troll wanted him for what could be taken from his body, and Halduron knew it and there was no escaping that knowledge while he remained tied down and forced again and again to sheathe a length that would have been too much even if he were a willing participant in this debauchery.

The only mercy lay in the distraction his rape afforded him: The screams and chanting were lost in the obscene sounds he and Ro'kun created, and the stench of cooking flesh and burning hair would surely have been fresher and cleaner than that of the heady, salty tang of blood and troll sweat that suffocated him even as his cries turned to open sobbing.

“Stop,” he begged, and the troll's enormity forced him to speak in time with each thrust - he couldn't draw breath enough to manage unless the words were pounded from him. “Please - please. Kill me. Torture me. Gut me - like you're gutting them. I can't—”

A hand came up, and again Halduron was silenced by a thumb forced past his teeth as Ro'kun leaned in and brushed a tusk against his cheek in a mockery of intimacy.

“So fragile,” the troll murmured. His breath came hot and wet against Halduron's face, and Halduron whimpered around him as he added, “Ya hurtin’, little mon? Ya feelin’ more pain dan pleasure? Ya gotta tell ol’ Ro'kun, he don’ know dese t'ings. Elves be so little…”

Another thrust came, hard and deep, and tears sprang to his eyes and pain washed through him and blinded him and all that he could manage was to nod and whine again until it had passed.

The thumb was removed - and returned a moment later, wet again with the same mixture from before.

“Dis gonna make ya feel better,” Ro'kun said. “Drink up, little mon.”

Another hard thrust, another bright flash of agony, and when Halduron could see and hear and think again he was sucking greedily at the troll's thumb, tongue searching for every last drop of bitter flavor - there in that bitterness would be relief, even if only for a moment.

“Good boy,” Ro'kun purred - and then he picked up his speed, driving himself smoothly into Halduron as the elf gave a weary cry and gripped at whatever he could to steady himself. “Ya gonna feel good soon. Jus’ let ol’ Ro'kun work on ya.”

Halduron could only try to ride him out as the troll shifted, striking at him from a different angle with every few thrusts as though searching—

The next thrust brought a white flash of pleasure with it - and before he could think to stop himself, Halduron threw his head back with a cry.

_“Dere_ it is,” Ro'kun crowed.

Now the troll began fucking him in earnest, striking his core with ruthless accuracy until Halduron began to feel heat and pressure building up within his groin.

“Ya feelin’ good now, little mon,” Ro'kun laughed. “Ya little one’s standin’ up at attention.”

“N-no,” Halduron gasped, squeezing his eyes shut in shame. This couldn't be - he couldn't be…

Ro'kun wouldn't let him escape so easily.

A ragged cry tore itself from Halduron's throat as the troll took him in hand, wrapping thick fingers tenderly about him and stroking upward, once, as though curious to see the reaction he could draw from his writing victim.

“So soft and small,” Ro'kun said, and he drew out every word as though relishing the humiliation he brought on Halduron. “Dis little t’ing…” A hum, low and hungry and resonating through Ro'kun's chest and into Halduron.

“S-stop,” Halduron begged, not caring that he had begun to weep again. “Please, stop it.”

“Ya be leakin’ an awful lot for wantin’ me ta stop,” Ro'kun laughed. “Here - lemme make ya feel good, little mon.”

He began to stroke Halduron off, moving in time with his own thrusts, and it was almost more than Halduron could manage to keep from simply folding into the rising tide of ecstasy.

“Don't,” he whined.

Ro'kun's hand stilled, and for a moment Halduron thought perhaps he had at last managed to trigger some semblance of pity in the troll - only to cry out in pain and then horror as Ro'kun doubled his thrusts and came into him with a sudden, bestial snarl.

The troll's unloading was every bit as savage as the rest of him, and Halduron's cry quickly turned to a sharp squeal as teeth met in his ear, breaking the skin and sending a trail of blood racing down the cusp as agony blinded him once more.

Ro'kun remained lodged within him, remained thrusting and growling and grabbing mindlessly at him even as the pain receded - and with nowhere else to go, his spend flooded Halduron's insides, so that by the time Halduron's vision cleared again there was a tiny, rounded swell to his belly.

“Good boy,” Ro'kun growled, and Halduron shuddered and whined without shame as the troll tilted his head and licked the blood from his neck. “Ya good, little boy.”

Good? Good - fucked publicly by a troll, fat with its cum, swollen and dripping with his own arousal even as blood still seeped from him? That was good? His comrades were dying, tortured and gutted and bled and incinerated for the favor of false gods and drunken savages, and he was being bred and broken like a bitch in heat and that was _good?_

“Halduron!”

His head snapped up - that had been an elvish voice, thick with drugs but clear and ringing and _beautiful,_ so beautiful - and there was the final prisoner, standing strong between his captors as they stopped and watched in puzzlement.

This one was his lieutenant. Kal’ren Swiftblaze - a good man, kind and gentle and clever, and Halduron cried out again to realize he, too, would die here.

“Hush,” Ro'kun hissed. One big hand closed lightly on Halduron's throat in warning.

“It's alright, Halduron,” Kal'ren called, and somehow - somehow he managed to smile, grim and sorrowful and gentle even now. “Do as he says.”

That roused a swell of cackling jeers from the throng, and even his captors sneered as they flung him down onto his stomach and began to bind him.

“Don't,” Halduron bleated. He leaned forward - as though he could do anything at all to stop this - and the hand about his throat tightened down. “Please - make them stop, Ro'kun.”

“Ya like dat one.” Ro'kun made a low, grating sound that sent gooseflesh racing along Halduron's arms. “Nah. Ol’ Ro'kun don' like havin’ ta compete. Dat’s a strong one dere, besides. Better if de loa take him dan if he be broken down like you.”

The hand at Halduron's length began to move again, and Halduron yelped and tried fruitlessly to squirm away from the contact.

“No - no, no, no, stop,” Halduron said. “Please—”

“Hush,” Ro'kun commanded him again, and this time there was an edge in his tone that rang like steel against a scabbard. “Ya stay wit’ me, or ya bleed wit’ him. If ya gonna stay, ya gonna t'ank me when I do for ya.”

“Please,” Halduron tried again. “Please, not now, he's—”

This time it was a whistle from the altar that stopped him short, and again Halduron turned his gaze to Kal'ren - just as he was placed upon the altar, bound as all the rest had been.

“It's alright,” Kal'ren said again, and Halduron didn't know and hardly cared why his voice carried so clearly over the sound of the trollish revelers. “You're alright, Halduron. You're going to be alright. I promise you.”

“Kal—”

Ro'kun bit him again, harder this time - hard enough that Halduron felt the cartilage of his ear break apart before the world went white around him.

The troll was stroking him off when he regained his senses, and thrusting inside of him again - languidly, almost lazily, and the sound of him stirring up Halduron's insides was wet and sickening.

“Come for me, little mon,” Ro'kun murmured. “Watch dis one die and celebrate wit’ us.”

Halduron resisted still, squirming and whining as the awful heat began to spread throughout his body. He couldn't - he couldn't do this, couldn't be made to, Kal'ren had cared for him and nurtured him and he deserved better than to have anyone fornicate at his passing…

Kal'ren looked to him once more as the chanting came to its deadly stop, and Halduron recognized the glitter in the doomed man's eyes as he smiled for the last time.

“Do as he says, Halduron,” Kal'ren called out into the killing silence, and for an instant all of time and space came to a sudden, sacred stop. “You'll be alright. I promise you.”

The knife fell just as Halduron let himself unravel, and as Kal'ren screamed Halduron threw his head back and howled grief into the blackness of the sky above - grief disguised as pleasure, one breaking disguised beneath another.

And when at last Halduron was spent, and Kal'ren had been slain and bled and cast into the flame, and the ritual was ended and dissolved into a drunken revel, Halduron allowed himself to fall back against Ro'kun and nuzzle close against the troll's sweat-slicked throat.

“Thank you,” Halduron sighed. He imagined Kal'ren laughing off gis gratitude and smiled softly at the thought.

Ro'kun chuckled, and the sound was rich and deep and thrumming while Halduron pressed his ruined ear against his chest.

“Ya elves break so easy,” he murmured. “But I gonna keep ya for a while longer. Ya fun, little mon.”

He rolled his hips again, and Halduron raised his head lazily to halt him for a moment.

“Before - before we start again,” Halduron said, letting himself stumble and welcoming the heat of his humiliated blush, “I - the drug you fed me. The one that soothed the pain? I…” A hesitation - fear disguised as shame.

“Ya want another drink?” Ro'kun asked after a moment passed in silence.

“Please,” Halduron said. “I - I think I could enjoy it better, if it didn't hurt at all.”

Ro'kun chuckled again and ran a careful hand atop his head, and Halduron let the ministration soothe him for a moment. It was a welcome relief. He would have little of it going forward.

“Ro'kun gonna give ya a vial, den,” Ro'kun said. “Ya little teeth be sharp - can't have ya bitin’ me wit’ dem!”

And he laughed, and Halduron laughed with him. And when a little glass vial was put against his lips, Halduron parted them and drank without hesitation, staring up at the effigy of the lynx-like figure as the ice flowed through his veins. If there were only loa here to witness him, then here, among their living supplicants, he would make himself worthy of their notice.

Halduron closed his eyes and sent a single thought into the stillness - a challenge hidden in a prayer, defiance mingling with desperation.

And the loa answered him.


	5. Hunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An Amani hunting party discovers shadows in the forest.

_Come close about the fire, children, and listen closely to your granny now. The night is dark and long, and something watches us from in the shadows._

_If you are ever in the woods at night - and you must try never, ever to be that - bring with you your strongest armor, your sharpest blades, your freshest potions and a loyal friend. These woods do not belong to us so much as others try to tell you. These woods do not love you like you love them._

-

The forest was dark and silent - in the latter case, far too much so for Val’shan’s liking.

It was the height of gonnag, the time when the birds and beasts gave birth and raised their young from infancy to adolescence. In these lands that had no season, the trolls looked to the animals to mark out the passage of the year, just as they looked to the animals to offer lessons and warnings from the loa.

Gonnag was a time of movement, of sound and stirring air. The young did not know the fear that drove their elders to silence and caution.

But the forest lay still tonight, and that should not be - and so Val'shan held his spear at the ready and made his footsteps swift and soundless as he pressed onward through the trees. He did not tremble, and he did not quail at the thought of remaining in the darkness alone; Mori and Al’taz were camped only a few dozen yards to the south, sleeping soundly until he returned to rouse them. When he did, they would pack their gear, scatter the ashes of their fire, and be off again as dawn illuminated the forest once more.

They had all hunted these grounds for decades. They had all learned the land and its creatures from their fathers and mothers, and they from theirs.

There were no monsters out here - they would have learned to hide from them, to steal prey and be away again before they could be caught, if anything lurked out here that could best a warrior of the Amani.

All the same, this silence was unnerving. Even were it man’gal, the time of feasts and breeding, it would be too quiet, too still. Even sleeping creatures gave some signal of their presence.

He stopped and listened, long ears straining for any sound at all… and nothing answered him.

Val’shan was not a coward, to flee the shadows of the night because they were too dark to navigate. But neither was he a fool, and so he turned and began the journey back to camp, spear raised ready and ears and eyes alert for what he could not see or hear.

No, the forest was not merely sleeping, not tonight. This was the coiled stillness held before one loosed an arrow - the quiet softness of the air in the lull between one breath of wind and the next. Something was out there, and something was coming in its wake… and Val'shan could not find any sign to tell him _what._

Motion overhead - Val'shan spun about, swinging his spear at the boughs above… but nothing came sweeping down after him, and the forest fell still around him once again as he waited.

His ears pinned back, Val’shan turned back around and doubled his pace, throwing dignity to the wind. Let the others laugh at him. He knew this forest, and he knew to trust the twisting dread building in his chest. There was something _wrong_ out here - and Val'shan was not prepared to face it on his own.

He crested the last hill silently and found that the camp lay undisturbed in the little clearing they had chosen. There were Mori and Al'taz both, curled up in their furs and sleeping soundly about the embers of their fire. The air was warm and sweet still from the rabbits they had killed and cooked for dinner, and the furs and bones they had scavenged from those still lay undisturbed in the pack they had tied to a nearby branch, high out of reach of the lynxes that sometimes prowled this region.

Val'shan hesitated.

It had been a warm night, and the fire had mainly served to offer light and protection from mosquitoes… but then, why had his friends bundled up to their shoulders, and curled up on their sides as though warding off the cold?

A small thing - nothing, perhaps, to an outsider, or even to another troll who did not know these two as Val'shan knew them - but it was _wrong_ and made the fine fur along his forearms bristle slightly. His instincts screamed at him to run, and leave his friends to find him later… if they could.

No. He had to be sure. He could not abandon his friends because he was afraid. The Amani were not cowards.

Val’shan certainly was no coward.

Still, he kept his spear raised as he descended the hill and slowly made his way towards Mori, who lay closer to him. The feeling of eyes on him was stronger now, and he had to remind himself that whatever might be watching him would surely have killed him before he reached the camp, and not allowed him to… to…

He stopped just before he would have knelt down beside Mori, heart hammering against his ribs as he felt the moisture of the grass beneath his feet… and finally began to realize that the sweet smell of blood was _not_ a leftover from the rabbits.

“Mori,” Val'shan whispered.

Mori did not move.

Val'shan gritted his teeth and flipped his spear about so that he could poke at Mori with the blunt end - once, then twice under the arm.

Still: nothing.

“Come on, Mori,” Val'shan growled, baring his teeth to hide the creeping fear that his efforts were in vain. “Wake up. There's something wrong out here, damn it—”

He lashed out and shoved at Mori with his foot, then scrambled back with a cry as the force of his kick sent the other man rolling onto his back, his throat ripped open as though he had been set upon by an animal.

“Al’taz!” Val'shan cried, scrambling to the other man. “Al'taz—”

He hit his knees beside Al'taz and rolled his friend onto his back. Al'taz’ head lolled on a neck that was whole but bruised and clearly broken, and his eyes stared sightlessly beyond Val'shan.

Val'shan backed away, wiping his hands nervously against his hunting leathers. Dead, both of them - dead by something strong enough to break their necks, and swift and silent enough to have done it under Val'shan’s nose. The eyes in the forest had been _real—_

There came a breath of movement behind him, and Val'shan jerked to the side just as a knife came hurtling past. The blade stuck fast in Al'taz’ corpse and gleamed faintly in the ember light: A smooth, straight blade and a pale hilt etched with fine gold filigree.

Elves.

Val'shan knew the elves. He had fought them once before, and heard stories from the warriors of his city who raided their villages when the elves began to range too far. Elves never hunted alone - if one was here, then more would come.

Mori and Al'taz had been slain where they lay sleeping. No one else was out in the forest tonight - no one friendly.

Val'shan was not a coward, but neither was he a fool. Throwing dignity to the wind, he turned and ran into the forest, abandoning the dead behind him.

He was not so far from home that the warriors of his city did not patrol these lands. If he could only find a patrol group, he could raise the alarm and summon warriors enough to scour the forest clean of these invaders. He only needed to outrun the elves for just a little while.

The forest came alive behind him.


	6. Hallucinations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halduron breathes poison into his lungs.

They were dying. All of them. _All of them._

Ro'kun had been the first to die, and strings of flesh from his throat still lay caught in Halduron's teeth as he tore into another warm body with his bare hands. They gave him weapons as they fell and he used each of them as well as might be done, but they were heavy, ugly things and his hands had forgotten how to close on aught but flesh and bone and there was sweeter joy in killing with his own body than with the assistance of a trollish club or axe or blade.

Someone cried out to his left and he was on them, teeth and claws ripping them apart even as fire blinded him and became all he knew. Smoke and cinders flared up around him and brought with them the stench of burning hair and skin and hide and herbs - poison, maybe, or perhaps simply herbs for healing or restraining.

His limbs did not weaken, nor the thunder of his heartbeat quiet, and that was enough to carry him onward to the next warm body fool enough to stand in his way and hack at him with blades. Savages, all of them, to stand behind shields and carapice themselves in plate and depend upon the artificial edges of blades forged by selfish mortal hands, as though false claws and false hides could ever stand to flesh and bone - a true warrior would face him bare of all these things, and then perhaps he would not slaughter so many of their number so handily as he did.

_You think yourself naked?_

Halduron snarled and flung an arm out behind him, felt his claws gouge into flesh, felt for an instant a second mirroring his movements perfectly, leading him in them, standing behind and beside and before him and yet lost in the next moment as blood sprayed hot across Halduron's face and blinded him with its salt.

_They are forgetting._

He did not need to see, and blood would not do damage irreparable before his tears washed it away. His teeth met in the hard flesh of a shoulder and bones splintered between his jaws. Crude hands with blunted claws grabbed him and tried to break him apart, but the pain fueled him now, made him alive and so made him _death,_ and if death should take him he could face it without fear if his enemies went before him into the darkness.

_You were forgetting. Now you remember. Now you can teach them to remember._

The other came again, a body like his own and a presence like a cat in a dark room, and it was two sets of hands that ended the troll beneath him, two sets of teeth that surged forward and down to rip out the creature's throat and then dig further down until they ran up against tendons and vertebrae. The other knelt behind him, and the other pushed him down with their own body, and when he lingered over the taste of ruined flesh and hot blood it was with the other's hand clapped about his jaw - a healer administering water to a dying man, a mother forcing medicine down the throat of a sick child too stubborn to allow himself to heal.

Sick - was he sick? What medicine was there in blood and breaking that could not be given to him with—

_There's poison in you, little one, and you were fool enough to breathe it in._

A snap behind him and agony lanced his chest, deep and sharp and white-hot like no other blade or claw had been since he had drunk the troll's elixir, and Halduron staggered beneath the blow with a ragged cry. Hurt - one of the beasts had managed to hurt him, truly hurt him…

His hand came up to clutch at his chest and closed instead around a thin wooden shaft jutting from his left breast. Blood trickled from the wound, hot and bright and rank with the stench of copper and sex, and that didn't make any sense because there had been no armed guards, none with arrows, the only ranged weaponry had been spears and tomahawks and there had been five so armed among the throng and he had counted each one that he'd gutted and—

Another arrow struck him, fletched like the other one with green and red feathers, like the ones that took his captain, like the one that he had seen embedded in Alyssin’s calf before he raced to save their captain - troll arrows, tipped always in poisons and headed not with steel but stone that carved deadlier and more ragged holes into the flesh than polished metal might do.

It couldn't be - _it couldn't be,_ there were no archers at this camp, he would have seen them—

“Breathe, little one.”

Halduron whirled about. That had been an elvish voice, an elvish speaker, that was no troll who spoke - but he was met not with the welcome sight of rescue, only a third arrow, this one made from gleaming honey-golden wood and fletched with neatly shaped feathers in gold and teal.

Elvish - an elvish arrow, in the colors favored by those posted near the walls of Silvermoon, but they couldn't be so far afield, he couldn't be so close to home, they should have heard the screams, they should have come and rescued them—

Two more arrows struck him, this time sticking fast into the flesh of his back, and Halduron shrieked and scrambled clumsily for cover. Why were they hurting him? Why were elves and trolls alike attacking him, shooting him, killing him? No commands were shouted for him to have ignored or disobeyed, no one had called to him from either side, no one had made their presence known to him at all, so why? _Why?_

Another arrow took him in the spine and his legs went dead beneath him, and in their sudden absence he was flung down and forward across the bloody soil with another desperate cry.

“Stop,” he wailed, terrified and savage still and scrabbling at the ground as arrows stuck fast in the soil around him. _“Stop, please!”_

Another arrow passed over his head, missing him by inches as he ducked and shielded himself with his arms… and then the thunder in his ears subsided, and no more arrows came, and the pain of his wounds became less real again.

“Look up.”

He shivered, but did as he was ordered. It was an elf who spoke, and they didn't sound happy but perhaps - perhaps he could reason with them, beg them for the mercy they didn't seem to think he deserved…

Instead of booted feet he found himself facing a pair of large hind paws - feline in shape but covered in fur too dark for any creature native to the Eversong, with claws as black as coal visible, though the claws of all the cats of Quel'Thalas were retractable and pale.

He froze, but an elvish hand reached down to grip him by the chin and the hand, too, was tipped in long, dark claws - not fingernails filed sharp but talons sprouting where there should be nails - and the strength levered into tipping his head back hardly seemed to match the lean, golden arm that flexed only gently with the movement…

“You were not afraid before,” the other said, and Halduron trembled as he laid eyes on a face that put the finest elvish sculptures all to shame - trembled not for the beauty of it but for the markings on the shining flesh of it, of white powder and deep, ruddy brown. Paint of peacebloom and smears of blood, he knew without knowing.

The other smiled at his trembling, and Halduron's breath caught fast in his throat at the sight of sinews snared between the gleaming, catlike teeth behind the other's bronze-toned lips.

“What—”

But Halduron's question broke into a scream as another arrow buried itself behind his knee, bringing feeling back in time for agony to rip through him once again.

“You challenged me,” the other said, and their voice was hard and deep and thrumming like the rolling of a massive war drum. “You called on me with heart's-blood in your belly and trembling in your bones and bade me answer you, and now you wonder who I am?”

Trollish effigies sprang to life around them, dancing and cackling and cajoling as Halduron wept and shook in the clutches of the other. One - the lynx, the one crafted from shale and quartz and dripping blackness from its maw that he knew now must be blood - that one gave a mighty leap and landed by the other, and the two looked down at Halduron with identical expressions.

And Halduron understood.

“You called on one they have forgotten,” the loa said, and their effigy stalked around to poke and snarl at a fallen troll. “Here in this ceremony that is a heresy to me, you called upon me for the strength to slaughter them on equal grounds - a fair battle, and a clean killing, such as they have not sought for many moons.”

“Y-you - you're not an elvish god.” Foolish words, but he was dying and he did not understand. “Why—?”

The loa flicked a hand and gold and copper glittered all about its wrist and fingers. Halduron flinched, but instead of yet another arrow he felt the agony recede in his knee, felt the arrow in his spine disintegrate and feeling return again into his legs and knew, without any sign or verbal cue, that he should sit up again.

“They have forgotten me,” the loa said again as Halduron dragged himself upright. “I am of many shapes, and yet they remember only the night-cat. I am of battle and honest combat, and yet they remember only that I offer strength and bloody victory. Why should I wear the forms they cast aside, who reduce my image to an icon of bloodsport-without-reason?”

The loa reached out then and tapped Halduron on the chest, and all the arrows there evaporated into mist, leaving not a scratch behind.

“You,” the loa said. “You fought for vengeance. You fought to honor the one who spent his last breath telling you how you might break your bonds and flee. You fought because you could not bear the breaking of your spirit.”

The arrows at his back fell away to nothing as the loa spoke and Halduron shuddered to be rid of them and of the pain they brought.

The loa settled back on their haunches and stared thoughtfully at him. They were bare-chested, save for a few copper bands affixed to their sides like rib bones and the markings drawn in white and red across their breast and belly - flat and hard with muscle, gleaming faintly as though the loa were covered in a thin layer of sweat.

“An elf proves himself worthy, and my former-chosen prove themselves gluttonous and greedy.” The loa’s eyes were narrow and the light of them burned brighter and more golden for it. “Your comrade named you Halduron before he died.”

Movement flickered in his peripheral and Halduron flinched, expecting another arrow - and looking and finding instead that the loa had a tail as well, long and leonine like those of the lynxes prowling the Eversong. But theirs were only tufted with short, coarse fur at the tip; the loa’s tail ended in longer, softer fur, silvery in the fire light and clotted, here and there, with streaks of blood.

The loa was waiting for an answer - he knew without being told, without any sign of impatience in the strange body or the immaculate, deadly face. Would it do to lie? All of his instructors had warned him never to give the enemy his name - but this was no enemy, only a loa that claimed anger with the trolls…

He must be dying, arrows did not strike and vanish bloodlessly as these had and so this must be some dying dream. It couldn't hurt, then, to give this one his name - and there could be no point besides in lying, if these were his last few moments before death swept in around him.

“I am,” he said, eyes watering as terror began to seep back into his bones. “Halduron… Brightwing.”

He could feel the loa's approval like heat radiating from stones in the sun. It did nothing to chase away the terror.

“And what are you afraid of, Halduron?” the loa asked, and their tail flicked again, and the camp swirled in mad colors around them, and all the effigies stopped where they were and turned to watch - all except the lynx, who stalked back to prowl around behind Halduron.

The words caught in his throat - death, and this loa, and becoming broken, losing all that made him elvish and becoming feral and animal so that others must put him down or die as these trolls had done, going mad and never knowing again reality from nightmare, all of these warred against each other to be the first upon his tongue and caught like thorns against the flesh of his maw until he was certain he was bleeding.

The loa reached up and placed two fingers on his brow, and though they landed gently the blow was like claws shredding through his brain and Halduron shrieked as agony lanced through the whole of him and knocked him sprawling on his back as noise and chaos danced around him once again, maddening and ever louder, ever brighter…

Only gradually did the madness stop, replaced with every dozen heartbeats by a little more quiet, and with every frantic wail by a little more darkness.

He was alone again. Alone among the dead - and in the distance, the horizon had grown streaked with gold and violet with the approach of the morning sun. Others would come, he knew: trollish soldiers, no doubt, too investigate the sudden stillness of this camp.

Or else, perhaps, a band of elvish rangers, come at last to offer aid to their imprisoned fellows. They would be too late for all the others - and if they saw Halduron like this, mewling in the dirt and the only survivor of such a brutal massacre, would they allow him to live?

No - no, he could not afford to find out. He must hide, and find some form of weaponry that he could conceal within his hiding place and use to good effect against armored, sober warriors.

Strength returned to him as he rose, and with a start he realized the odd, sweet scent of the smoke was familiar. Hallucinogens - Kal'ren had trained him how to recognize them by scent and color and texture, all in the unlikely event that Halduron be captured and then able to escape through his captors’ base.

He must have burned their entire stash of the drugs when he flung one of them down to burn to death. That was when the madness had begun.

Had that been the witch doctor he'd killed…?

He shook his head and dragged himself to his feet, casting about for something he could shelter in. He had to hide - he had to get out of sight until he knew for certain who was coming for him…

There.

A weapons rack had been emptied and then knocked over in the battle, and lay now propped against a low stone wall. Blankets and weaponry lay all around - and so did the bodies of the dead.

He had little time to act, and his limbs were becoming leaden now with weariness. He dragged what he could carry to the skeleton shelter of the upturned weapons rack and set to work, paying no mind to the stench of death or the second set of arms he felt working alongside him.


	7. Games

“What shall we take off next - the index finger? Or the thumb?”

Alexos shivered and bit back a whimper. He refused to look at his hand where it lay shackled down against the weathered table. He refused to look at the blackened, poisoned stump where his other hand had been only yesterday.

He refused to look his tormentor in the eyes.

A sigh rattled through the frigid air, raspy and wheezing, and Alexos flinched sharply as he felt the blunted edge of the chisel come to rest against the base of his thumb.

“It's rude not to answer when you're spoken to, boy.”

The death knight who had been set to torture him had a deep, coarse voice, and his tone reminded Alexos of the sergeant he had trained under for those scant few months before he and the rest of his company had shipped off to Northrend. Hard, unforgiving. The voice of a man who demanded attention and respect.

Alexos had none for the Scourge.

Another sigh, and the chisel came away as the death knight stepped around in front of him - far too close, so that his armored bulk made up the entirety of Alexos’ field of vision, and seated as he was, the young soldier was eye-to-belt with the death knight.

The memory of what he had seen this creature do to another prisoner just two nights ago set Alexos’ guts twisting, and he ground his teeth and closed his eyes with another hard shudder. He knew nothing. He would give them nothing because he knew nothing, and no matter what they decided to do to him he would still know nothing at all that they could use—

A gauntleted hand gripped his chin and forced his head back just as an armored knee came down too close between his legs. The wind left his lungs in a ragged squeal, and tears sprang unbidden to Alexos’ eyes as his face crumpled with pain.

“Is this better?” the death knight asked, and now his tone was honeyed and thick with mockery. “Did closing your eyes make the monsters go away, little one?”

“Fuck you,” Alexos spat, refusing still to open his eyes.

There was a snort, and then his head was tilted to the side. He fought against the death knight when his head was turned the other way, but the creature was stronger by far, and Alexos succeeded only in twisting his neck.

“No,” the death knight said after a moment. “You're too scrawny. Too much of a brat, yet. You'd hardly be worth the extra five minutes.”

Alexos’ eyes flew open in disgust.

His tormentor had been human, once, and looked as though he had been in his forties or so when he was turned. The face was blunted, with a square jaw, full lips, and heavy jowls set beneath a wide, hooked nose and a heavy brow. Maybe in life he had been someone handsome; in death his eyes were bruised and heavy-lidded, and his pale cheeks were blotchy with burst blood vessels that probably would never heal.

He didn't let himself look at the ruin of the death knight's throat. He'd seen it once or twice. Someone had had the immense pleasure of strangling this one to death.

The creature leered until his pale, bruised gums were laid bare.

“See something you like, boy?” he asked, leaning down towards Alexos until the stench of his dry, cold breath became suffocating.

Alexos swallowed back a swell of bile and narrowly resisted the urge to spit. It wouldn't break him out - only make his suffering more intense.

The death knight stared quietly at him for a moment, seeming to weigh him up—

Pain exploded through Alexos’ right arm, the damaged one, the one the hand was gone from, now it was the shoulder and the pain wasn't stopping it was going deeper and growing worse and somewhere he was certain he was screaming but the thing kneeling over him wouldn't let him thrash or look or—

A strike to his face sent his thoughts tumbling to a halt.

For a long moment, Alexos sat silently, his head hanging down to his chest. The pain in his arm had receded almost immediately, but his body still shuddered and convulsed in the wake of it, and it seemed an eternity before he was able to gather strength enough to raise his head.

“…awake yet, boy?” Slowly the death knight's voice came to him through the fading throb of blood pounding in his ears, and through the tears still blurring his vision he saw the creature move to stand in front of him once more.

Again a hand grabbed him by the chin, and panic shot through Alexos and drove the last of the fog from his mind as he wrenched away from that awful grasp and the agony it had brought before—

Another strike across his face, gentler this time but still enough to set his ears ringing.

“Man up,” the death knight ordered. “Death and decay, is this what passes muster in the Alliance? We used brats like you for target practice in my day.”

Alexos spat bloody foam at the creature.

“You served under a freak,” he spat. “A mad dog who turned on his own people. You still do.”

He tensed, ready for another strike - but what drove a flinch from him this time wasn't a bolt of pain, but the sound of the death knight's booming laughter.

“There's the spirit,” the death knight finally said, and Alexos flinched again as he was clapped on the shoulder. There'd be a bruise there, he was sure - assuming he survived that long.

“What are you talking about?” Alexos demanded, watching warily as the death knight returned to his chisel and hammer. “I just insulted your commander. Your Lich King. You're… praising me for that?”

“Of course.” The death knight leveled a bemused look on Alexos, heavy brows raised as though the soldier had said something particularly daft. “My job is to break you down into a quivering wreck of a man. I'm very good at what I do, and I'm rewarded well for my trouble.”

He crossed his arms at the wrists in front of him, still clutching his chisel and hammer.

“But I can't break you if you're already a snivelling ruin,” the creature continued. “There's hardly any point in mutilating a broken man, and it wouldn't be any fun besides.”

Alexos stared at him for a long moment, uncertain what to say - what to _think_ in the face of such insanity. That's what it was: Insanity. Utter madness. This thing before him was enjoying this and wanted a thrashing victim so he could continue enjoying this…

“Fun?” He finally said. “All of this - just so you can get your rocks o—”

The knight moved and the sound of metal striking metal and bones separating rang out and Alexos shrieked as agony rounded through his hand.

“There,” he heard the death knight say, “now you're catching on.”


	8. Phobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diokophobia - neologism referring to the fear of being pursued, even if logically the thing chasing one is unlikely to cause harm.

Del’thena trembled where she sat hidden in the shadow of a broken, upturned chaise.

The ruined manor was quiet and dim in the light of the early morning, and she could not for an instant allow herself to hope that these two factors would better her chances of survival. Her hunter was silent and merciless, and knew the shadows every bit as thoroughly as Del’thena knew the streets of Silvermoon. If she was not cautious…

She gritted her teeth and banished the vivid terror from her mind. No. She was a huntress before the Scourge had struck Quel'Thalas, and then a thief among the frantic refugees of Silvermoon. She knew the shadows, too.

_But they found you then,_ her mind whispered. _You're here now because you thought this would be better than a cage._

Fel crystals were not something one could hope to receive a simple scolding for stealing - and Del’thena had stolen more than a handful in the months since the first shipment had arrived and been distributed among the survivors. When she was captured and her pockets turned up a pair more than she was allotted for the day, she had been given what had seemed to be an easy choice: Face the cold, damp confinement of a prison cell, with an even thinner ration of crystals to sustain her… or ply her talents in a manner that would benefit her people, and so earn her freedom with her service.

She hadn't realized what the latter would entail, at the time. Now she cursed herself for not asking a few more questions.

The hair at the back of her neck prickled, and her ears twitched as the air shifted around her.

Close.

He was close.

She quashed the sudden urge to bolt and reached out instead with her senses, trying to catch any sound or sight or scent that might give away the man pursuing her.

He was alone, at least - this much she knew for certain. That did not make him any less dangerous; she knew what he had done to Sokar, had watched it happen from what she had believed to be a safe hiding place. If he was willing to drown a heavily-injured young man until he stopped moving—

Something shattered in the next room, and Del'thena jumped at the sound.

“I hear you, little mouse,” her hunter murmured, and his voice carried like thunder through the empty building.

Del'thena held her breath and forced herself to hold still. Like stone. Like dust.

The air shifted again.

“You flinched, just then,” the man said. His voice was soft still, and the words were warm and almost gentle, as though he were smiling fondly as he spoke. “You're in the parlor, I imagine - beneath the chaise, perhaps?”

Del'thena did not flinch. She allowed herself only the barest little breath through her nose. She quashed again the desperate urge to flee.

Gradually, the air grew still once more.

This time Del'thena felt the quiet settle in her spine, like the raised fur along a lynx’s back, and very narrowly stopped herself from turning to check over her shoulder. The voice had been in front of her, she was certain of it. He could not possibly have moved behind her in so little time - not without her noticing.

She slowed her breath to a careful stop again, hoping to catch any trace of sound… and instead felt the barest whiff of warm air flutter across the back of her unguarded neck.

“Found you,” Halduron murmured at her back.


	9. Psychological Manipulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dar'khan hesitated, at first, to slay the magi guarding the Sunwell. Fortunately, his Blessed Lord was there to offer him... encouragement.

“Dar'khan! Over here, quickly!”

Dar'khan turned at the call and saw Magister Brighttalon beckoning him to a place behind the foremost ring of defenders surrounding the Sunwell. Several other magisters had already formed a second ring there, interspersed with spellbreakers and even, he noted with some disdain, a handful of young elves garbed in the robes of senior apprentices.

The foremost line was comprised entirely of the highest-ranking members of the Magisterium - those who still lived, in any event - and yet Dar'khan was relegated to the backlines.

How _fascinating._

He hurried into place between a pair of apprentices, facing the doorway to the sanctum as several lines of elite soldiers and archers were sent to guard the entrance from without. Dar'khan counted fifty spellbreakers and a handful of palace guards, easily discernible by their gilded pauldrons and gleaming, ensorcelled blades they wielded. Those would be a problem - if any of them were to hear commotion from within…

_ **Then you must not let them hear you.** _

Dar'khan trembled, thanking his own armored robes for the cover they offered as _His_ voice washed through him in a gentle rumble - like thunder in the distance. Like arcana coursing untamed through his veins. It wouldn't do if anyone were to see him shaking now; they would think him flighty, and watch him more closely out of fear that he might panic.

_ **Then you must convince them, one last time, to trust in you. You will not fail here.** _

Dar'khan drank in the praise and felt himself grow still once more. His face betrayed nothing of the heady thrill each word sent racing through him. The fools gathered at his every side noticed nothing, and remained focused intently on their preparations.

_How?_ Dar'khan asked, and though he stood poised and confident, in his mind he felt himself fall to his knees before his faceless Lord. _How can I keep them from hearing? I cannot risk casting a dampening spell; if those outside do not sense the magic being wrought, those here with me will see it, as they see all magic._

Laughter filled his mind, low and thrumming and without mercy, and again Dar'khan blessed the layers of his robes, the softness of the runeweave and padded cotton as a harder shudder than before passed through him.

_**I will show you,**_ his Master promised, and briefly there came a brush against his mind - a hand passing over his hair, a collar that did not exist being tugged where it might lay about his neck. _**Watch with your sharp eyes, and do as I instruct you.**_

Dar'khan watched - carefully, from the peripheral when he must, so that no one else would see his eyes darting about and wonder at what he sought, for his Blessed Lord showed him first the points about the sanctum where his spellwork must be anchored. And when his Lord showed him the spell itself, Dar'khan did not gasp aloud at the beauty of it, nor allow himself to quail visibly at the intricacy it would require.

_**You have all the skill and power necessary for this spell,**_ his Master assured him. _**Silence this hall, and cut down the vermin surrounding you.**_

Dar'khan’s fingers trembled beneath the long sleeves of his outer robe - but even as he enacted the silencing spell, beautiful and invisible and deadly, he hesitated at the order given him.

_They are many,_ he whispered as the outside world slowly became cut off from the sanctum, obscured behind a web that mimicked perfectly the existing network of protective wards placed hastily about the sanctum. _When the first falls, they will see. They will know I am a traitor._

_**Then you must slay the strongest of them first.**_ There came a gentle tightening about his throat, fleeting and cold against the ambient heat of the Sunwell. _**You know these mongrels. Your eyes can see the magic each of them possesses. Are they yet shielded?**_

_No,_ Dar'khan answered, searching each aura as he completed the silencing spell. _But they will be, when the first of them fall. They are already on edge._

The tightening about his throat grew more intense.

_There are spellbreakers here, as well,_ Dar'khan continued. _They have been trained to—_

_ **I am aware.** _

The pressure at his neck became too great - Dar'khan held his breath so that he would not rasp or wheeze.

_Please, My Lord,_ he begged. _My Master. I wish to serve, but if we are caught - if I am slain before I can complete this task your Champion has given me…_

The pressure at his throat grew worse still, until true pain rang through his esophagus… and then relaxed again, punishment rescinded in a flash of indulgent mercy, and again Dar'khan forced himself to remain silent as relief flooded through him.

_**Dar'khan,**_ his Master murmured, and the sound of his name upon such mighty lips was nearly his undoing. _**Of all among your people, I have chosen you. I have seen and fostered the talent they, in their ignorance, spat upon and left to wither. Now you have been sent by one I have chosen to aid My armies in this final push. Do you believe We have chosen wrongly?**_

_No!_ Dar'khan felt cold with sudden panic. No - no, no, no, he could not prove himself so unworthy now, he could not fail here, he _would not…_

Strength settled through his bones, a cold, terrible strength that bore with it the stench of empty graves and the hard, unfeeling certainty of death - and Dar'khan recognized the power his Master leant him, and shook again with gratitude.

“Magister?” an apprentice beside him asked. She was a young thing - bright and soft and foolish in her youth. A shame that she must perish in this futile effort.

_**They deserve to die,**_ his Lord whispered, and Dar'khan could feel cold breath upon his ear. _**All of them - swine before your might.**_

“I am well,” Dar'khan assured the girl. “Focus your eyes upon the entrance, and pray we need not engage this foe.”

_ **Yes - the death you deal will be a mercy to them. Let it not be said that your generosity is lacking, my loyal servant.** _

The girl frowned, but nodded and turned about again. Her cheeks were round still with youth. Her throat lay bare of any protection, soft and warm and inviting.

_**The strongest first,**_ his Master urged. _**Destroy the greatest threats now - all in a single, brilliant blast. I have shown you the spell you need. I have given you the power you require. Break them apart. Make them know how they have failed you.**_

Dar'khan gathered his power close about him, singling out the outer ring of defenders. Twenty-three targets. Twenty-three warm bodies, and every one of them with their backs turned to him.

_ **Just as they have always done. They do not respect you. They do not fear you. They believe you a worm who does not deserve their acknowledgement.** _

Fury kindled in his chest - and Dar'khan exhaled it into a burst of power, and sent twenty-three bodies tumbling in pieces to the floor.

Chaos erupted about him, and Dar'khan jerked back in horror at what he had wrought as others scrambled to those bodies who had not been reduced to so many bloody gobbets.

“They're here!” the apprentice beside him cried, grabbing frantically at his arm. “Magister, what do we do?”

Dar'khan looked down at her - at her pretty throat, at her wide eyes, at the aura pulsing in terror about her slender form.

_**Take her,**_ his Master whispered, and Dar'khan smiled at the secret He bled into his mind. _**She is full of spare mana. Drink of it. Drain her of her magic, and turn it upon her fellows.**_

Dar'khan placed a hand over her own, mindful of the screams and shouts still ringing out around them, and held those lovely eyes with his own.

“Be brave, my dear,” he told her, and with a brush of kerdaurgy he felt her panic turn to mindless calm. “You will not perish to the Scourge this day.”

Another charm layered over the first, and the girl lay open to him, complacent in her artificial calm.

_ **Now.** _

Dar'khan reached out and grasped at her magic - and then dragged it unto himself, drinking every last drop of mana from the girl so swiftly that she had no time to scream before she shriveled up into a gathering of dry skin stretched across brittle bones - though by the agony in her bulging eyes, he judged the process brought her agony before she fell, lifeless, against his feet.

Power flowed through him, sweet and warm and brilliant. This one had been a pyromancer; how fitting that she should aid him in the destruction of her peers.

The spellbreakers died first - fifteen of them there were, and fifteen of them he cooked alive in their armor as they turned to apprehend him. Their shrieks drowned out the cries of the remaining magi as at last his “fellows” realized his treachery - but nothing could drown out the ecstasy his Master gave him in reward for the slaughter.

_ **Kill them all, my servant.** _

Dar'khan waved a hand and impaled two upon a single lance of ice, catching the foremost of the pair through the mouth and sending both flying back to be pinned against a wall. Another wave of his hand, another burst of magic, and three more were dragged together by arcane ropes that bound them at the throats and continued to constrict until spines snapped and flesh tore apart.

Dar'khan made no effort now to hide his laughter, nor the loud, desperate sounds each new death tore from him - his Master desired carnage, and carnage earned him more pleasure, and Dar'khan had surely never known such ardor as there was in the simple act of butchering the living.

Now only three apprentices and a feeble old man remained - and now the old man fell, screaming as Dar'khan blinked in front of him, gripped his weathered head in both hands, and leeched him dry, crying out in ecstasy as magic and pleasure and completion rocketed through him and left him gorged and desperate for yet more.

Two of the apprentices attempted to engage him with their feeble magicks, and swiftly found themselves sorely outmatched. Dar'khan incinerated one, and in a flash of depravity summoned another lance to skewer the second from his groin up through his body and out through the top of his skull.

The final apprentice was wise enough to recognize defeat, and made to flee. Dar'khan smiled and waved a hand once more, summoning not an elemental but a void walker to his side with an ease he never might have imagined possible before.

_**Finish it,**_ his Master ordered - and when Dar'khan sent his summon after the apprentice, he was rewarded with a greater twist of pleasure than any his Master had granted him in the moments before.


End file.
